Network management devices allow a user to manage network devices such as switches, routers and hubs. Typically, a management device searches the network for network devices when it is installed. As each network device is discovered, the management device (which may be a server) reads information from the network devices concerning their hardware configuration, network connectivity and software configuration, and stores this information into a management database.
Traffic data management is an example of a function in some network management devices that allows a user to collect traffic data from the ports of network devices. To conduct traffic data collection, the user selects one or more network devices he is interested in from the list of network devices that the management device has discovered. A list of ports for each device, their attributes (port type, speed, duplex mode, etc.) and traffic data collection capabilities are retrieved from the management device database. Based on this information, the user device (or client), displays the list of devices and their traffic capable ports to the user for him to configure. That is, the user selects which ports to collect data from and the type of data to collect.
Network switches have chassis that have many slots that accept blades containing physical ports. These switches are dynamically reconfigurable in that the user can add, remove, or swap a blade (thereby changing the type and the number of ports) on the fly in a running switch. When this occurs, the network management device database becomes out-of-sync with the current hardware configuration of the switch. If a user then tries to configure traffic management for this switch, he would be presented with incorrect information about its ports.